The movie The Hunger Games is based off of Suzanne Collin’s book with the same name. The book is 100% first person, with a lot of detail coming from thoughts made by Katniss Everdeen. However, the movie wasn’t strictly shot from Katniss’ point of view. They also didn’t include any sort of narrative to the movie, relying instead on Stanly Tucci’s character Caesar Flickerman for some vital information during the games.

Why was the decision made to shoot the movie without a narrative by the main character, Katniss Everdeen?

3 Answers
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These kind of questions come here over and over when we talk about adaptations (books to movies, games to movies, comics to games, etc.) and it's really simple to answer:

1) Because movies aren't the same as books—the same applies to comics, games, manga, anime, etc. etc.

Really, keep in mind that maybe the book could be a really incredible experience to be read. But as I said: to be read. Trying to copy and paste the narrative mechanisms to another kind of art is very tempting but it could be a disaster, too.

Talking about the subject in question, The Hunger Games, it's very easy to read because Katniss explains everything (one of the reasons, but let's stay only with this for now). That's because the reader simply watches Panem through Katniss' eyes, and lacks the need to construct explanations. In the case of a movie, the images explain themselves.

Could you imagine two hours of movie with Katniss saying things like "I'm hurt", "now I'm hungry", "now I'm falling in love with Peeta... or maybe not" and the sequence of images showing the exact same thing? Boring.

2) The reason is way more psychological: Collins and the director (Gary Ross) have two different ways to telling the same story, and really that's it. Two different POVs, two different narrative tools, two different minds, two different ways to show us the same thing....

Personally, I like both the book and the movie, each for its own reasons. Both the movie and the book show a really dramatic image of a very degenerate world, but both do this in its very unique way.

PS: sorry for my English, I'm just learning, I hope you understand what I wrote.

AirieFenix has given a really good answer above, but I would also add that first-person movies very rarely work satisfactorily.

A great example would be Lynch's Dune, which sought to pile on as much exposition as possible through the use of copious inner monologues in the form of voice overs. Personally I don't have a problem with the film, but many viewers found this confusing and stilted.

+1 Hah, I also immediately thought about Dune when talking about "spoken thoughts". That's something I always found unique (and liked) about it. For me it made a great contribution to the overall atmosphere in the scenes where it was used. But in this case I'd rather consider it a stylistic technique than a story-telling one. I guess it is not the only thing for viewers to find strange about the movie (though still being one of Lynch's more understandable movies) ;).
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Napoleon Wilson♦Mar 28 '12 at 16:40

Fight club worked wonderfully, for example. The voice-narrated Blade Runner made me want to put a blade to my wrists.
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hexparrotMay 31 '13 at 22:26

@hexparrot "The voice-narrated Blade Runner made me want to put a blade to my wrists." - Then Harrison Ford has achieved what he wanted. ;-)
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Napoleon Wilson♦Mar 15 '14 at 15:44

Now, imagine how can you write this down in a book? Expressions are hard to tell in written media so you can display his feelings by writing down his facial expressions. It is easier to tell her feelings and powered them with little expressions like then she smiles.

But in a movie, it is better to use facial expressions and body language. Emma suddenly sulks, then her lips begins to move slowly and ends up in a crooked smile. It is not good to use an outer voice to tell what she thinks while she can use expressions to express it.

The Hunger Games have a similar situation in here. First book is full of flashbacks which tells the story of Katniss and Peeta. Adapting this to a movie is not easy and logical. That causes to switch point of view which the story is told. Because books are all about Katniss and people or events around her. If you rip the parts that are hard to adept to the movie, what you had at hand is not enough to make a good movie.

Also, the book offers some action scenes, but not too much. But movie fans expects the movie to have more action scenes, because expressions are easier to use than feelings in a movie. That also causes explains some changed events:

In the book, muttas have the faces of deceased competitors who died in the 74.th games, including Rue. That causes Katniss not to use her weapons since they are ones who died in the previous days or killed by her.

In the movie, they are muttas with doggy faces, and Katniss uses her bow to hunt them as much as she can do. She do not have any feeling that stopped her from firing her bow